Dan Radmacherhttp://www.danradmacher.com
Going Further, Growing Deeper.Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:02:10 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2https://i0.wp.com/www.danradmacher.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Website-photo-1.jpg?fit=32%2C32Dan Radmacherhttp://www.danradmacher.com
3232120690776Three “Un-American” Principles of God’s Economyhttp://www.danradmacher.com/2017/09/three-un-american-principles-of-gods-economy/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/09/three-un-american-principles-of-gods-economy/#commentsFri, 22 Sep 2017 00:02:10 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=962My friend looked puzzled at me from across the table, swishing his coffee around in his Starbucks’ paper cup, unsure how to respond to my question. We sometimes met for coffee and conversation, and this week had meandered our way into one of our perennial discussions, whether or not America had been founded as a so-called “Christian nation.” He argued that this country was founded on biblical principles, and I argued that they were actually Enlightenment ones. Instead of going around again, I down-shifted into another question, one that took him aback. “Would you say that this is a Christian economy?” He stammered a little, afraid to answer and find himself boxed in. “Um, it is a Capitalist economy.” I responded, “So I guess you agree with me. Our economy is based on the principles of Smith, and not the Bible.” He was quick to answer. “That doesn’t mean that it is incompatible with the Bible.” I was having fun with him now. “Really? An economy based on the principles of self-interest—of greed—isn’t incompatible with God’s economy?” Now he was having fun with me, and fired back: “What is God’s economy?”

As a Christian who really values what the Bible teaches, I don’t think that I have ever heard that question asked before. What kind of economy would God choose? What principles would undergird that economy? Would it look anything like ours? The interesting thing about one’s own culture is that it is very hard to evaluate. We tend to soak up the water in which we are swimming, and so it diffuses uncritically into our thoughts and worldview. As Americans, we like to make a religion out of liberty, and so on the surface, a “free-market” system sounds plenty righteous.

The surprising thing is that God did design an economy, and yet it is seriously different from our own—not just in practice, but in basic principles. In Leviticus 25, God outlined some basic economic structures for Israel that are surprising and even threatening when viewed against the backdrop of Capitalism. Perhaps there is a deeper knowledge contained within these principles that is more in harmony with the universe that we might be able to recognize in our day and age.

1) The Principle of Conservation

When we step back into the Old Testament, we become accustomed to the idea of a Sabbath, that is, a seventh day of the week which is holy to the Lord in which the people are to do no labor. They are to rest. This is very familiar territory. When I look at this chapter, however, I find something extraordinary. Every seventh year, the land was to rest. They were not to sow their fields nor harvest their vineyard. Instead, they were to live off the land for that year—gathering only the produce that they needed for themselves and their extended family, and not taking it to market. There is a kind of radical freedom built into this agricultural cycle.

Now, I used to think of this prohibition in Capitalistic terms. Conservation just makes good sense when you think about it in terms of productivity. After all, we know from history and from research that the land gets played out when you plant the same thing year after year. Farmers today will rotate their crops, aggressively fertilize, and let the land lie fallow in order to get a better yield. Notice that this isn’t strictly about productivity, however; conservation is actually about faith.

“And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, since we shall not sow nor gather in our produce?’ Then I will command My blessing on you in the sixth year, and it will bring forth produce enough for three years.”

What happens in an economy like ours is that you become a slave to production. Anxiety or greed drives you to apply all of your time and resources to get ahead, to store the excess, and to insulate yourself from need. It is about independence. Our freedom becomes a buffer against faith. And something happens with the land and its natural resources—they become our slaves. We abuse the environment because ultimately, we don’t want to live by faith. However, this command contains a kind of radical freedom because it liberates us from ourselves. The discipline of giving the land a rest unshackles us from our tendency to work ourselves and the earth to death. God declared a seven-year farming cycle not just to keep the environment in balance, but our souls in balance as well. Conservation is about faith.

2) The Principle of Ownership

On the Day of Atonement every forty-nine years, something even more radical would happen: a ram’s horn would sound throughout the land declaring the Year of Jubilee. What was the Year of Jubilee? After six/seven cycles of Sabbath years, a great Sabbath year would be celebrated. On this year, every Jewish inhabitant of the land would return to his extended family and his “possession.” When the land had initially been divided up among the tribes of Israel, every tribe and family had been granted land—they were all “landed gentry.” Over time, that land would be bought and sold as fortunes changed and people needed money. But on the Year of Jubilee, every field or parcel of land would revert to its original custodian.

The underlying principle is this: God is the owner of the land, not us. He writes the following reminder: “The land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me. And in all the land of your possession you shall grant redemption of the land.” If you read down further in the text, you find that with some exceptions, the land was not bought or sold permanently, but was leased until the Year of Jubilee. In other words, we’re simply custodians of the land—stewards of what belongs to God alone. As the landlord, God wanted the land to be periodically redistributed among the people, not stockpiled by the wealthy or the powerful, presumably so that a sense of stewardship would extend to all the citizens of their nation.

Just imagine that principle being instituted today—it would create complete havoc in our economy. Capitalism is founded on private ownership and the accumulation of wealth. We have a fundamentally different idea about the ownership of the land than God does. In fact, when Thomas Jefferson drafted the original Declaration of Independence, it is said that our “inalienable rights” included “life, liberty and property,” following John Locke, and that this phrase was crossed out and changed to “pursuit of happiness.” We don’t understand that we are merely stewards in God’s economy, not owners.

However, there is a radical freedom here as well. When ownership is permanent, then you can’t make a mistake. Failure is final. Falling ill could very well be fatal to your family. One meagre harvest could start a downward spiral that would lead to perpetual slavery for you and your dependents. There was no redemption. Does that sound familiar? But in God’s economy, there is always hope. Someone could redeem the property for you, or at the very least, the property would return to your family on the Year of Jubilee. In our world, a world which is desperate for hope, this should sound like good news. Hope represents a radical kind of freedom.

3) The Principle of Social Equality

Three times in this passage, the following clause is repeated: “If your brethren becomes poor.” With each instance, there is an escalation of poverty—the kind of downward spiral that I mentioned before—and so there is a remedy with each one. In the first instance, he has been forced to sell some property, but you are to grant him the right of redemption. In the second, you are to invite him to live with you as a “stranger and sojourner” and not charge him interest on a loan. In the third, he has sold himself to you as a slave, but you are to treat him with dignity as if he were a hired servant. But every Sabbath year, something truly massive happens: all debts are released, and every Hebrew slave is to be set free. There is a total reset on all accounts. The slate is wiped clean. This is radical freedom.

Debt was the primary source of slavery in the ancient near East. Moreover, it tended to create a society in which the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The result was a class-burdened society of the haves and the have-nots, a community of individuals who were not on equal footing with one another. That is not what God wanted for His covenant community. Instead, He wanted social equality, and so it turns out that there was a social safety net built into His economy. He didn’t keep poverty from happening—sometimes they were sovereignly broke. Instead, God created an economy where debt forgiveness was woven into the warp and woof. Debt forgiveness kept their society from degenerating into class warfare.

I know that there are things in this passage that are problematic, and I’m certainly not saying that we should throw out our economy and revert to an ancient agrarian paradigm. And yet, perhaps there is a deeper knowledge contained in these radical principles that we cannot understand unless we first believe. In fact, maybe we are actually blinding ourselves to these counterintuitive truths when we insist that our culture and country has ever been operating according to biblical principles.

Interestingly, there is evidence that the Israelites never regularly practiced the Sabbath year; indeed, it is the reason cited by the writer of Chronicles as to why they were sent into captivity in Babylon for seventy years. I’ve never been one to take ancient commands and apply them willy-nilly to our country today. However, if there is a downside to disregarding the heart of God for an economy, then maybe paying attention to some of these radical principles might invoke an upside as well.

Some people believe that this year, 2017, is a Jubilee year. Maybe this year is the time to begin to think seriously about these radical, “un-American” principles.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/09/three-un-american-principles-of-gods-economy/feed/1962Why Tribalism Continues to Divide Christianityhttp://www.danradmacher.com/2017/09/why-tribalism-continues-to-divide-christianity/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/09/why-tribalism-continues-to-divide-christianity/#commentsSat, 09 Sep 2017 18:41:49 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=957One of my favorite Dr. Seuss books of all time is the lesser-known tale of the Sneetches. A race of odd-looking, Seussical animals known as “sneetches” lived on beaches, but the species was divided into two groups: those with stars on their bellies and those with no stars. As it happened, the ones with stars looked down on the ones without, refusing to speak to them or socialize. “We’ll have nothing to do with the ‘Plain-Belly’ sort!” It seems such a small thing—a star—and Geisel adds knowingly that you wouldn’t think it something that mattered at all. A salesman arrives and invents a machine that can place stars on their bellies, and later, another that can remove them—for a price. Chaos ensues. Stars are coming and going as fast as can be. The point is clearly made: there will always be superficial things that divide us, but the trick is finding the core things we have in common.

I have often felt a little this way about Christianity. Growing up, it felt like there were concentric circles of orthodoxy around my life and my community, divisions that separated us from one another in some meaningful way. We would drive past these other churches with weird names like Episcopal or Methodist and I’d wonder silently to myself if they were one of “us” or one of “them.” We gravitate towards tribes, but this isn’t just a religious thing—it is a human thing. As humans, we’ve always had an easier time celebrating the things that divide than standing on what we have in common. To be tribal is to be human; unity demands the divine.

As a devout Christian, I would like to believe that the gospel is something that should unite us, but our track record is not so good. As it turns out, tribalism has been dividing Christianity from the very inception, even though it shouldn’t have. What we have in common is so much greater than our differences! The problem is not that we don’t want unity enough, but that we are blind to tribalism in ourselves, as well as the way that it corrodes community and undermines the gospel. This is played out in the first real conflict of the early church in the book of Acts.

1) The People

The book of Acts opens with a small group of Christians gathered for prayer, and meeting with a not-yet-ascended Jesus. This is quite an homogenous group. They are all Jewish. They are probably all locals. Some are related. Many have known one another forever. But something is about to happen that will blow that away. On the Day of Pentecost, thousands of people from other cultures—many Jewish—are gathered in Jerusalem. The Spirit falls in power and the disciples begin speaking and preaching in many languages. Thousands are added to the church. They go from being incredibly homogeneous to incredibly diverse…in just one day.

The key word here is “in common,” which is the Greek word “koinonia.” Now, whenever I have taught this passage, people get a little uncomfortable at this last part. For Americans, the specter of communism hangs over those words, and that scares them. But “in common” goes even deeper, and perhaps that scares us even more. What it signifies is the radical elimination of divisions between us, not just the obvious one of property, but the more subtle one of identity. We now identify with Christ and His body before any other tribe. The gospel is meant to collapse tribalism by creating a new allegiance. That will be tested a few chapters later.

The solution was fairly simple and it is played out in what follows. The most obvious problem was that the leadership needed to be diversified. As the church had grown beyond that initial homogenous group, leadership needed to change and become multi-cultural. That is really a good lesson for us today, and it is just what they did. They chose seven people to handle the daily distribution, and if you look closely at their names, you will see that they are all Greek. Unfortunately, that addressed only half the problem—the structural one. A deeper one existed.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think that the Jewish people handling the distribution of bread intended to discriminate against the Greek widows? We’ve just seen two descriptions of this incredibly loving and generous community. They saw themselves as completely unified by the gospel, so bereft of any divisions that they liquidated their own property to help one another. Widows would have been the most vulnerable people in their culture. Was it on purpose? Of course not.

Tribes lock down the deepest allegiances in our lives, but unfortunately, they are very often invisible to us. You only recognize those divisions when you are on the outside of the tribe looking in, like the Greek widows were. The only way that you can possibly see the exclusion they cause is to step outside of yourself and see your tribe as others can. It requires asking self-aware, other-centered questions of your choices, like “Does this include or exclude others in the community?” No matter how compelling the message of the gospel is, it won’t change anyone unless we first welcome it to rearrange our own tribal prejudices on the deepest level.

3) The Challenge

Over the last two centuries, Christians have become experts at locating their superficial differences and allowing them to divide—not because we are religious, but because we are human. I could reach back into church history for a myriad of examples, but I have only to look at my Facebook newsfeed to see it happening in real-time. One person doesn’t believe in the sign gifts, and believes that those who do must be charlatans or deluded. Another champions Calvinism, and speaks as if those who don’t are nominally Christian. Another is politically progressive; how could he possibly be a Christian? (wink) The list goes on and on. We create little tribes around each of these issues and divide from one another over and over until Christianity is little more than a patchwork quilt of tribal preferences.

The problem is that with the worldwide situation today, nobody really needs to find yet another entity to divide us. Division is tearing our world apart, whether religious or political extremism, on the right or on the left. Post-Christian people look at religion and say, “Why would I ever want to get involved with that?” No one needs another tribe to claim their loyalty and spur dissension. Instead, what they really need deep down is something to give their lives meaning, to connect them with one another in deep community, to give them value and the power to live life in a way that is redemptive and restorative. The gospel can do that; however, it requires that we learn to live out of what we have in common.

How did the Sneetches get over their issues? The story doesn’t really say. Maybe after so many trips through the machines, they just got tired of the whole thing. In the book, Geisel says that with stars coming and going so quickly, they got a little confused about who was who. I doubt that it happens that way in real life. But I do wonder something: maybe they began to see life from another perspective.

I challenge you today to step outside of your tribe. Have a real conversation with someone who sees things differently from you. Begin a friendship with someone with a different background than you. Create a new network that is OUTSIDE of your normal routine so that you start to meet people who are unlike you. Step out of your comfort zone and get a little curious about people in general. Start to ask questions about how they came to see things the way they do. Perhaps you will find, along with the Sneetches that it begins to be hard to see who is who.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/09/why-tribalism-continues-to-divide-christianity/feed/2957When Wholeness Seems Impossible (or Three Lessons that I Learned from Doing Jigsaw Puzzles)http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/08/when-wholeness-feels-impossible-or-three-lessons-that-i-learned-from-doing-jigsaw-puzzles/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/08/when-wholeness-feels-impossible-or-three-lessons-that-i-learned-from-doing-jigsaw-puzzles/#commentsThu, 24 Aug 2017 20:09:53 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=942I grew up with a family that loved to do jigsaw puzzles together. We had a large oval dining room table, and so every holiday we would lay out these massive 1500 or 2000 piece puzzles that would commandeer the table. I remember several years when we actually had to set up Thanksgiving dinner on top of the puzzle and were careful not to mess up the pieces as we passed the plates. “Can I please have some more potatoes, and a helping of puzzle?” There were traditions in my family with regards to puzzles as well. My dad would always say, “That piece should be easy to find,” and we’d all groan aloud. Invariably, someone would become convinced that a certain piece was missing, even though it always turned up later, whether under the table, within the crush of pieces, or inside my brother’s pocket.

A puzzle is really a metaphor for life. You lay out all these pieces and you try to see the big picture hidden there by looking at all the little parts and imagining how they might go together. And then you try to piece them together as best as you can with a lot of failure and frustration, and these occasional tiny victories. Sometimes they’ll go together easily and you feel like you’re a genius. Sometimes you’ll have a dry spell and you won’t get any to go together for a long time. Sometimes you’ll keep trying, even though the whole thing is a mess, and sometimes you just have to walk away for a time. But the beauty of a puzzle is that there is a coherent picture behind the chaos. Underneath it all, you know that wholeness is possible.

Unfortunately, the struggle that goes with assembling a real puzzle in life will challenge that belief. When you’re agonizing over a puzzle, you begin to hear a little voice in your head that says something like, “This has no meaning. Struggle is all for nothing. There is no rhyme or reason, no big picture here. You’ll never find wholeness.” At those times in my life, I strive to remember the lessons that I learned about wholeness from doing jigsaw puzzles, lessons that also happen to be summarized in a famous verse in Romans: “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

1) Wholeness is a conviction

It is tempting in this day and age to think of wholeness as the completion of your puzzle. We are ingrained to think this way from our youth when we read that they all “lived happily ever after.” The illusion is that the puzzle will be complete today or some day when we find the right piece. But what about tomorrow? What about when you add children to the fairy tale? Or the loss of a job? Or the addition of a job that forces you to relocate, or commute across the city? Or what about illness? The reality is that pieces which don’t seem to fit keep getting added to the chaos. It becomes clear that wholeness must not be completion, but a conviction.

When Paul says that “all things work together” he is making a statement about a conviction that there is a Designer behind all of this who has created a picture, and that the picture is slowly coming together. There is someone who is controlling all of the things that happen in this universe and that happen in our lives to bring them into a meaningful whole. When you start a puzzle, you begin in faith that all of the pieces are going to fit together in the end. There won’t be any missing, or any that don’t fit. Sometimes that conviction goes against our experience, especially when the pieces in our lives are simply not going together in a way that makes sense.

So Paul says that “all things work together for good” because he believes that ultimately, God is good. There is a Designer who is completely powerful and yet completely good. Wholeness is only possible if that is true. And so sometimes we must reimagine what “good” means. Good tends to be subjective here. It tends to mean comfortable. It tends to be immediate. Good must have a broader definition. It must mean wholeness and not these other things. Because God is good, I believe that this picture will be beautiful in the end in spite of the darkness—in spite of the mistakes I’ve made, the stupid things I’ve done, the way that I have hurt people or have been hurt by them. And so I just keep picking up pieces and putting them together because I believe that a good God makes wholeness possible.

2) Wholeness is guided by a purpose

The most obvious thing about a puzzle is the fact that the picture is broken. As you look around, it is pretty clear that brokenness is part of our reality as well. As Walker Percy speculates in “Lost in the Cosmos,” perhaps some cataclysmic event pulverized reality into trillions of pieces. The universe wasn’t always fractured as we find it today. We long for wholeness even though it has never really been part of our experience. However that happened in history, one thing becomes clear. If a Designer composed this picture, then wholeness is only possible because that Being decided to put it back together again. Wholeness requires purpose.

I have friends who don’t believe in God, and yet believe in a mystical force that governs the universe and that is basically working everything out for them. They believe in an impersonal power of fate or destiny, and yet, it is personal enough to know everything about them and make it happen for them. That is like saying that electricity is going to make sure that you marry the right person or succeed in your career. In actuality, that is a Star Wars faith. Seriously, if this power doesn’t have thoughts or sentience, then how could it govern anything in your life? And would you really want it to do that? Would you want it to make choices for you? But a personal Being with power has a will and can call you to a coordinated purpose.

What that means is that every piece matters to the whole. When I spread out a puzzle on a table, I never think, “That piece doesn’t matter. It isn’t important. I can toss that one away.” On the contrary, I know that every piece matters. There are exactly the right amount of pieces included in this box, and there are no extras thrown in for good measure. That is true in nature as well. If a Designer is behind the universe, then it is clear that Being has amazing economy of effort. Nothing is wasted. If there is a purpose guiding all things, then everything has purpose.

If wholeness is possible, then nothing in your life is wasted. Wholeness means that the days and hours you spent in that dead-end job matter. It means the relationship which exploded in your face matters. It means the business you tried to launch but failed miserably matters. It means the money you loaned to a friend but never saw returned matters. It means the love you poured into the life of a stranger matters. You may never witness it, but if wholeness is possible, then nothing is wasted.

3) Wholeness is the result of struggle

One thing I have noticed by looking around at creation and looking at puzzles is this: the Designer values the process. Everything that happens in nature seems to take time—things happen organically. There is a struggle built into the creation of things. We may not like it—we like things that are immediate. I grew up thinking that God created the world in just six days because that is what the Bible seemed to relate. Today, I doubt that is how the Designer accomplished it. I don’t doubt that it could have happened that way, but I find that the Designer rarely circumvents a process that He invented. Struggle is a process that is hard-wired into nature.

Struggle is the working out of God’s purpose. I know that some people don’t like puzzles because they don’t see the point or don’t like the frustration. Sometimes I don’t really like puzzles either. But I recognize something about puzzles. When I get up from that table, I’m a different person. Something about struggling through the process has changed me, has influenced my character, even if only by degrees. There is a purpose to puzzles that is deeper than just putting the pieces together.

If you look closely at the rest of this passage, you see that deeper purpose: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.”Oddly enough, part of the puzzle—part of the cosmic process of the universe being restored—is having the character of Jesus formed inside of me. As it turns out, the place where the universe was broken is not just around me, butwithin me. That is hard to accept in a society which sees the other person as the problem. Wholeness must happen in my character before it can spread across the galaxies. It must bear fruit in my heart before it can transform the world. That means struggle. It won’t be immediate. It won’t be comfortable. But it will be good. That is wholeness.

When you buy a puzzle, you might notice something—there is always a picture on the cover of the box. Puzzle purists don’t ever want to look at that picture for help; they want to complete the puzzle independently. That is how we tend to be. But it is provided as a guide. It is supposed to lead you toward wholeness. In my family, we would always resist using the box until that moment when all else failed. And in that moment, a defeated voice would mumble, “Can I look at the box?” When wholeness seems impossible, I hear my own voice mumbling the same thing.

What is the picture on the box? It is not a picture of you or me. Wholeness is bigger than you or me. It is not even a picture of peace on earth, even though that is certainly part of it. Instead, it is a picture of the universe restored, and the very centerpiece of that collage is a figure on a cross—the figure of Jesus. If you look down in the corner of the puzzle, you might see a tiny figure, an aging guy with a receding hairline—it is me writing this essay. I am part of this picture and so are you. You might also see that I am praying in the picture. I am praying for you—that you would come to know: wholeness is possible because God is involved.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/08/when-wholeness-feels-impossible-or-three-lessons-that-i-learned-from-doing-jigsaw-puzzles/feed/1942The Truth Behind Teasinghttp://www.danradmacher.com/2017/08/the-truth-behind-teasing/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/08/the-truth-behind-teasing/#commentsThu, 10 Aug 2017 21:18:36 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=938“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” We have all used that retort as children, and maybe some of us still use it from time to time, but there is little doubt that it isn’t true. We may have slightly more sophisticated responses as adults, but chances are that wordscan hurt us, sometimes deeply, particularly when they are from someone close, someone who inhabits that inner circle of security. Why? Because words have power, more than we like to admit, even when delivered with a wink and a nudge. Indeed, teasing is all about power and the imbalance that it creates. When someone close to us teases, we’re caught in our inadequacies. We think to ourselves, “What is he saying? Why would she say that? Is there something wrong with me?” As a result, teasing is one of the more perilous relational practices that we condone as people and as a society.

If you ask people their thoughts on teasing, you will get a variety of responses, many of them passionate. Some people are proponents of teasing—defending it almost like a religious belief—while others are outspoken against it. Never mind why they are so positive or negative in their positions. Research shows that it is likely due to factors like hierarchy, gender and cultural norms. Ultimately, we all make a decision about teasing based on what we have personally experienced in our lives. Studies show that the teaser and the target report very different experiences, however, which suggests that the practice may not be as benign as we think. Some scientists have called teasing “the riskiest and most costly form of play by relational partners.”[1]

Since teasing walks such a perilous social line, wouldn’t it be better for people of faith to stay well back from the cliff? As Paul urges in Eph. 4:29, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” What exactly does corrupt mean in this setting? Clearly, it means anything that doesn’t build up the listener—that doesn’t impart grace. What is grace? It is undeserved favor. Words have incredible power either to bestow grace or target weaknesses. Is teasing a socially-accepted indulgence that pleasures the teaser, but ultimately weakens our relationships?

In order to get at this question, I interviewed five couples in different stages of their relationships—one couple married for fifty years, one married for one, and the rest somewhere in-between. These were healthy relationships—not ones that were already in trouble. Even though it wasn’t a scientific study, I met with them to ask a simple question: what place does teasing have in your relationship?

1) The Definition of Teasing

The first and most difficult question in the study is a definition of what exactly constitutes teasing. Definitions of teasing can range all the way from flirtation to bullying. According to various studies, it can be anywhere from “pro-social” and affiliative to destructive and abusive. Surely a definition cannot be so very broad and be useful, and so this is exactly where scientific studies have struggled.

Dacher Keltner of UC Berkeley, a renowned researcher in this field, has defined teasing as “an intentional provocation accompanied by playful off-record markers that together comment on something relevant to the target.” He further notes that the word “teasing” is derived “from the Anglo-Saxon ‘taesan,’ which means to tear apart, and the French ‘attiser,’ which means to stoke furnace fires.”[2] Researcher and author Jess K. Alberts identifies four elements to teasing: 1) aggression, 2) playfulness, 3) humor and 4) ambiguity.[3] I find hiding under these definitions a fifth element: truth. For a tease to have any teeth, it must contain relevance. There must be intentional targeting at work or it just isn’t teasing.

For example, if you try to tease someone about being bald, fat or annoying, but they aren’t bald, fat or annoying, then it isn’t teasing. The tease would simply be confusing or strange. There must be some element of truth—or perceived truth, as the case may be. There must be an area of sensitivity with a big bullseye tattoed on it for all to see. Teasing is like a big comfy couch where you have placed a pin for someone to shockingly discover. Depending on how aggressive the tease, the couch may be more or less comfy, the pin large or small. But there must be a pin—there must be truth.

The first couple that I interviewed were newlyweds. They had known each other for several years, but had also been through some very wrenching struggles in the process—not with one another, but with families and relationships. It had been a pretty intense courtship, and so they seemed more like the inhabitants of a foxhole than your usual playful bride and groom. They were still learning truth about one another, but they knew how dangerous it could be. Truth of the teasing kind was like a grenade in their foxhole. Why pull the pin on your partner’s grenade when you would get hit by shrapnel? Wisely, they never teased. This is completely in keeping with the research, which shows that couples in crisis situations almost never tease.[4] Why? Because we intuitively know that teasing risks damage.

2) Asking for Change

One of the key factors of whether or not a tease “succeeds” is whether the target can read the intention of the teaser. Ambiguity is built into teasing. The recipient is purposefully left wondering, “Are they serious?” There are a variety of factors that play into that determination—facial cues, context, familiarity, gender, social status, and so forth. Of course, the teaser will often respond with the familiar line “I’m only teasing” in order to signal their intentions. Survey research shows that teasers and targets very often diverge in the intentions they perceive in the tease, with the overwhelming majority of targets taking it seriously.[5] But what if the intention of the tease is not just to be playful, but indeed, to ask for change?

I believe that most teasing which occurs in relationships is actually a subtle or not-so-subtle way in which to ask for change. Teasing is a technique we’ve developed over time in order to passively confront someone about an area of disagreement or conflict while allowing them to save face. Listen carefully to almost any tease and you will hear an element of truth—something relevant—as well as an injunction or a hidden message about something the teaser would like to see changed. Even in the most seemingly innocuous banter, there is an “ask” implanted by the teaser. They are asking for some kind of change from their target.

I used to have a roommate that used teasing in that manner. If someone’s dishes had stacked up in the sink, he would tease about it. He would use humor to make a point. When I asked him why, he responded, “I thought maybe humor would make it easier to swallow.” The problem with using teasing in this way is that it delivers personal criticism about a sensitive subject in an ambiguous and a flippant manner. Indeed, my roommate wasn’t actually talking about the dishes—he was criticizing personal habits and discipline. He was addressing a very personal subject in a non-serious way and hoping that the target could make the translation. The likelihood is that the target will respond not with careful listening, but with defensiveness. If no grace or love is imparted in the criticism, then how could it ever be received?

As I questioned the couples in various stages of their relationships, what I found is that the newest couples simply could not tease in this manner. It was destabilizing and just too dangerous, and so the wise couples stayed well back from the cliff. As familiarity increased, however, I found that the teasing increased as well, which is in keeping with the research, but something else happened: the teasing itself changed. The content of the teasing became completely benign. As love grew, so did grace.

3) Beneficial Certainty

As each of these relationships aged in a healthy way, they developed a safety zone that could handle the conflicts and differences that emerged along the way. I call it “unconditional positive regard,” but a phrase that is borrowed by Dr. Steve Peisner is “beneficial certainty.” What that means in a relationship is that “I love you for exactly who you are, and not in spite of who you are.” There is a big difference.

Let me explain. Over the years, I have found that many couples get together in spite of their differences. The belief is that they can change the other person into who they want them to be—into a mirror image of themselves. That may be love, but it is not a deep, sustaining love and the truth is that it never works. Show me a relationship where two people have made a commitment to change one another and I’ll show you a relationship riddled with one tease after another. The thing that can make marriage great, however, is not that you have a partner who will put up with your flaws, but that you have someone who loves you for just exactly you who are. Beneficial certainty means that you want to bring out the very best in one another. It means that you see the deepest truth and so you use your words carefully.

When I interviewed my last couple—the fiftieth anniversary one—I knew what I expected to find. I expected to find that teasing had no place in their relationship. What I found was the exact opposite. They almost took umbrage at the idea that teasing would be found questionable. They thought of themselves as big teasers, much to my surprise. This is in keeping with scientific research, which says that satisfied romantic partners tease in more pro-social ways.[6] As I questioned them about teasing, however, I found something different. They had really redefined teasing. It bore little or no resemblance to teasing as modern society knows it. For them, teasing had no negative comment whatsoever—no intentional targeting of inadequacies. Instead, it was about bringing out the best in one another. It was about grace. Bottom line: they understood that words have power either to tear down or build up, to destroy or bestow grace.

My roommate eventually became the best man in my wedding. He had had some struggles with relationships over the years, and so periodically, he would come to me for advice. I tried to explain the above to him, and he had a hard time grasping what I was talking about. I remember him asking me, “But what do you do when that little thing just bugs you, the way that she laughs or chews her food?” I said, “I try to embrace the very thing that bothers me. I try to love her, not in spite of our differences, but because of them.” He responded: “What about the serious issues? What about real differences?” After a brief pause and in a moment of clarity, I said: “The same. You cannot change something in someone if you haven’t chosen somehow to love them first.” As love grows, so does grace.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/08/the-truth-behind-teasing/feed/3938When Does Anger Become Hate?http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/07/when-does-anger-become-hate/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/07/when-does-anger-become-hate/#commentsMon, 24 Jul 2017 21:56:33 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=932“It’s not personal; it’s business.” Many of us have heard that phrase, but some may not know where it comes from. That line belongs to The Godfather, the 1972 blockbuster by Francis Ford Coppola, which pictured life and business in a Mafia crime family in the second half of the 20th century. The idea is that your misdeeds are somewhat excusable because they are disconnected from any anger you might have towards your adversary. Throughout the movie, however, we find ourselves asking, “Is this reallynot personal?” The climax comes when crime boss Michael Corleone becomes godfather for his nephew. We hear him audibly “renounce the works of Satan” in a baptismal ceremony while his minions one-by-one routinely murder his adversaries, including his brother-in-law. The ebony eyes of actor Al Pacino seem cold and dead, like the eyes of a shark, as the camera mugs his face, straining to detect any emotion. The thing is, it just isn’t true. As the movie and its sequel progress, we find that it is deeply personal. As Michael ages, we are allowed to witness the hate that is bottled inside of him consume his heart.

There is a lot of talk about hate in this day and age. It seems like just disagreeing with someone can get characterized as “hate” in our world. A differing opinion is treated as black and white, right or wrong. And yet, I doubt that many would agree that they hate someone else, because hate is politically incorrect. We might deeply disagree but we never harbor resentment or rage, do we? We might feel anger but we never hate. It isn’t personal. Really? Well, when does anger become hate?

Jesus had something to say about this subject. In the first major sermon of His ministry, Jesus called for a deeper righteousness than we could muster on our own. He argued that the kingdom of heaven is first and foremost a kingdom of heart, and so a heart prepared for the kingdom is one that has been supernaturally changed. It turns out that in the kingdom, everything is personal. Anger really matters.

1) The Problem of Anger

The problem of anger is a problem of hate. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expands the idea of righteousness to something that is deeper than behavior. He shockingly compares being angry at your brother to breaking the commandment against murder in the Mosaic Law. “But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.” (Some translations include the words “without a cause,” but that isn’t found in the oldest manuscripts, and was likely added later.) The definition of murder was premeditated killing, “lying in wait” for someone. Our actions don’t often happen in a vacuum or at random; our behavior springs from the inside. Hate of some kind is usually what gives rise to first-degree murder. So Jesus is saying that when you hate someone, you are killing them in your mind, even if you never actually pull the trigger.

This past election season, there was a lot of hate going around on both sides. In fact, I had to get off Facebook for a while, because surprisingly, I was finding the capacity to hate being nurtured within me. I remember listening to one particular pundit on the news, and saying to my wife, “I just want this election to be over so that she’ll go away and I won’t have to see her again.” In effect, I was killing her in my mind. When we are angry at a brother—someone with whom we’ve had a relationship—what do we do? We withdraw. We distance ourselves. We try to create a world in which they never existed. We murder them in our minds.

How does anger become hate? Here is the crux of the issue: unaddressed anger tends to become hate. That is the heart of this passage. When you don’t deal with a conflict that has arisen in a relationship with a brother in a healthy way, then you create a little world in which hate thrives. When you try to push it down or ignore it—when you withdraw or distance yourself from them because of what they have done—then you fashion a cauldron out of your heart which will boil and bubble over with each reminder. Anger which goes unaddressed is hate in disguise.

Micro-aggressions reveal an inner world of hate. When you are holding onto anger, insulting your brother becomes your reflex. It is a passive way to ask for change. Haven’t you found this to be the case? When you are angry at someone, don’t you find passive ways to criticize them? Doesn’t your teasing start to get a little more aggressive? Don’t you find yourself going there instinctively? Teasing has become a socially acceptable way to ask for change in others without directly addressing it. Micro-aggressions are a symptom of anger morphing into hate.

Jesus gives two examples of aggression, first century equivalents of name-calling: “Raca” and “Fool.” But the point is not the words, but the extreme judgments that are then passed. When we see ‘hellfire” in the Bible, we frequently think of eternal punishment. But in the Greek, we find something deeper and more profound. The word is Gehenna. It was the valley of Hinnom next door to Jerusalem where all of the garbage was dumped and burned. The result was a landscape that was forever on fire, a smoldering wasteland. When you hold onto anger in your life, then it is like your heart becomes a smoldering wasteland of hate—a ruin of potential. If you leave anger unaddressed in your life, I can guarantee you Gehenna.

2) The Remedy for Anger

Anger must be directly addressed, but this is where it gets complicated. There is not always the opportunity to address things with someone. They might refuse to meet with you. They might want to withdraw instead. I have that situation in my life right now with friends who are angry at me. Or you might have anger towards someone with whom you cannot be reconciled, like a dead parent or relative. You might be angry against someone that you can’t know—like the government or an institution. It is complicated. So Jesus gives two examples—a conflict with a brother and with an adversary—as a starting place to think about resolution.

I love the fact that the first example is placed in the setting of worship. He says, “Leave your offering at the altar and first be reconciled.” Worship is very popular these days, but I find that there is also a lot of misunderstanding. We tend to think that what God wants in worship is our performance. We put a lot of resources and energy towards getting the offering just right. But the offering that God desires is actually a heart unencumbered by grudges. When you don’t address anger, then it threatens to suck up all of the spiritual space that is meant for Him. It takes over your life. You can’t give your heart to God when you’ve given it to a grudge.

I’ll always remember the first time that I led the song “Good, Good Father” in worship. A few days earlier, I had accidentally hurt my seven-year-old son—not physically, but emotionally. We had been fooling around, but I had taken it too far and hurt his feelings. I began to just weep in the middle of the song because I was so grieved that I had not been the kind of father that God had been for me. Maybe the reason I was so emotional, however, was because I thought of my own father. We spoke on the phone several days before he died and he told me that he loved me, but it was the first time in a decade. And so in that magnificent moment in worship, I realized that I wasn’t a good father either. I failed. I needed grace.

Ultimately, we address anger by acknowledging grace. We invite kingdom values to overwhelm and saturate us in every way possible. We cannot walk around with unaddressed anger in our hearts, because the grace and mercy of Jesus is so much more powerful than all the grudges we could carry. We must invite the purifying and healing presence of the Spirit inside to radically change us with the gospel. I had a debt that I could not pay; Jesus paid a debt that He did not owe. When we have been forgiven so great a debt, how could we hold possibly hold a grudge?

When I feel anger building towards someone, I begin to pray for that person. That is the starting point. If I can’t address them directly—if there is nothing else that I can do—I can still ask God to change my orientation. You can’t hate someone and pray for them—not really. Love will begin to replace hate in that prayer. And as I pray, I bathe my mind in vivid mental images of the grace and love that was shown to me by Jesus, and the debt that was paid on my behalf. What needs to happen in my heart is that I need to see and understand myself as just as great a debtor as the person for whom I am praying. It is the way that a supernaturally changed heart occurs—it happens by degrees as the Spirit opens up spiritual space within me.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/07/when-does-anger-become-hate/feed/3932Can I Follow Jesus But “Unfollow” Parts of the Bible?http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/07/can-i-follow-jesus-but-unfollow-parts-of-the-bible/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/07/can-i-follow-jesus-but-unfollow-parts-of-the-bible/#commentsTue, 11 Jul 2017 18:12:42 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=928If you’ve ever read the Bible straight through, you know it’s an interesting trip. Genesis starts out easy enough. It reads like a parable—almost like a children’s story—about how the world began and developed. Soon enough, it becomes the story of a really dysfunctional family, and it gets worse from one generation to the next. It’s like watching a train wreck. Exodus is pretty exciting at the beginning—with Moses, Pharoah and the exodus—but it gets strange as you get into the Law. For example: if you beat your slave and he dies, you are to be punished, unless of course he lives for several days, in which case you’re alright—he’s your property. It gets weirder in Leviticus. If a woman gives birth to a baby boy, she is unclean for just seven days, but with a baby girl, it stretches to two weeks. Huh? And you can be executed for almost anything, including adultery or cursing your parents. How in the world is this stuff in the same book as Jesus and the gospel?

The recurring problem that we run into in this day and age is trying to reconcile what we find in the Old Testament with what we find in the New Testament. The two halves of the Bible seem almost unrelated, as if a different god is operating in the background. A typical response is often to ignore those things, or to claim that they don’t apply to us today. But that is really unsatisfactory, and everyone knows it. So along comes Jesus, and we expect Him to represent more modern views, and yet, He doesn’t really seem to go there. In fact, He says two really shocking things about the Old Testament at the beginning of His ministry, things that don’t appear to fit with our expectations. How can we possibly reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the grace-filled and loving Jesus that we have come to know?

1) Destroying the Bible

In the way that people handle the Bible today, they often want to “destroy” it without realizing it, and this is particularly true of the Old Testament. Well, Jesus says something really shocking: “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law and the Prophets.” Notice how He addresses the assumption that was already there in the room. The Pharisees and religious leaders were geared up for Jesus to throw out the Old Testament, and that was a major threat to them. Today, we have a very different problem. Truth be told, we would probably love for Him to have thrown out the unseemly parts of the Law—the sections that seem irrelevant or offensive to us today. We would love for Jesus to be the guy that we have imagined.

The word “destroy” here really has the idea of “repeal and replace,” which we are familiar with today in America because of Obamacare and the efforts in Congress to get rid of it. We repeal and replace a law because there is something inherently wrong with the existing legislation. But that is not Jesus’ attitude here. He is not looking down his nose at the Law or the Prophets, as though they are outdated. Why? He didn’t come here to repeal and replace the Law, but to fulfill it.

Here is the problem: you don’t destroy something if you are going to fulfill it. The Law and the Prophets didn’t need to be repealed and replaced. Jesus didn’t abolish them because He intended to accomplish them, or literally, to bring them into being as a child comes into being. The Greek there is the basis of our word “genesis.” It is the pregnant promise that will only be fully and finally revealed in him. He goes on to say that not one letter or piece of a letter will pass away until it is “birthed” (so to speak). Tim Keller says, “Jesus’ view of the Bible is so high it gives me a nosebleed.”

Some time ago, I was singing the Bach St. John Passion with a large choir at a church in downtown Los Angeles. Before the concert began, the pastor stood up and gave a kind of disclaimer—that this is a masterpiece of music, but that we are much more enlightened now than when it was written, and we ought to listen with that in mind. Now, I understand what he was attempting to communicate. He was trying to say that the Bible was addressed to a very different culture with different foundations. I get it. There is no question in my mind that the Bible contains truth that has been incarnated in extremely cultural garb. But his underlying message is troubling: the Bible has value as a cultural artifact, but with no real abiding truth. The meaning that we find inside is rather the meaning that we bring to it.

That is problematic. I’m not sure how you follow Jesus as Savior and yet reject what He himself believed about the Bible. You can’t have it both ways, can you? You don’t destroy something if you are hoping to see its promises fulfilled.

2) Understanding Holiness

Perhaps our biggest problem with the Old Testament—the thing that prevents us from reconciling the two halves of the Bible—is that we deeply misunderstand and gravely underestimate the holiness of God. We always have. Jesus makes another statement that should be even more shocking. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter thekingdom of heaven.” Now, the Pharisees have a bad rap today because we see them all as hypocrites, though not all were. They were serious about holiness, but some misunderstood the Law. They thought that if they could avoid the obvious sins and accumulate enough good works, then on balance, they’d be alright with God. Who among us hasn’t felt the same way? We judge ourselves on balance as being alright with God.

Bottom line: we misunderstand something about holiness. It isn’t about how small or innocent your mistakes are, but about how absolutely holy God is. We’re not the standard—God is. Jesus makes this incredibly sweeping statement: “You shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Who could ever achieve that? Exactly. The Law isn’t primarily about our holiness, but about the holiness of God.

Why is Jesus important to the whole of the Bible? Because Jesus makes a relationship with a holy God possible. If holiness is not an issue, then we don’t need Jesus at all. Without the backdrop of the Old Testament, then the purpose of Jesus is simply to teach us how to live and how to love one another. He is purely a moral example for us to follow, like Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. In that case, “love wins.” But that was not Jesus’ idea about Himself. Jesus came here to pay the debt of our sins on the cross. Moreover, the righteous life that He lived was credited to me by grace. It wasn’t just about a good moral example; it was a rescue.

When I was a very little boy, I was toddling around on the deck of a swimming pool while most of my family splashed around in its depths. I guess I decided that I wanted to join them, even though I couldn’t swim, and so I plunged in. My dad, quick as a wink, dove into the pool to rescue me. Imagine if instead of jumping in, he had decided to try to teach me how to swim from the side of the pool? As I’m going under, he is saying, “No, Dan, you need to kick your legs like I am doing.” It would be wrong to treat a drowning person that way. That is not what Jesus did—He didn’t come just to be a moral example for us, but to rescue us.

3) Wrestling with the Scriptures

How do I handle the Old Testament? I don’t treat it as “flyover country” in my devotions. I don’t attempt to nuance the meaning of those embarrassing parts with creative interpretation so that the words don’t mean what they seem to be saying. I really want to see the heart of God revealed in the Old Testament as much as in the New. But I try to remember something: Jesus only makes sense when against that backdrop. I can’t make Him something other than what he was. I can’t make Jesus all about love and forgiveness, as nice as that sounds, while simultaneously tearing away the righteousness and holiness embedded within the Law. You see, grace is only meaningful when it is against a backdrop of the absolute holiness of God.

And so I wrestle—yes I do—but it doesn’t keep me from reading and it doesn’t keep me from following. Instead, when I read the really difficult parts of the Old Testament—like when Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son in Genesis—I say the following to myself: “God is not like me. God is on a completely different plane. The things that are important to God are not always the things that are important to me. I want to know this God, this God who gave His Son to rescue me. Because it is only through the cross—only through grace—that I can possibly attain to that holiness.” The holiness of God is what makes grace so very meaningful.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/07/can-i-follow-jesus-but-unfollow-parts-of-the-bible/feed/2928Can Faithfulness Really Heal a Nation?http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/06/can-faithfulness-really-heal-a-nation/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/06/can-faithfulness-really-heal-a-nation/#commentsFri, 09 Jun 2017 17:57:36 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=920Every winter for many years, my wife and I have taken a trip north from our home in Pasadena to the community of Mammoth Lakes, California to enjoy a ski weekend together. It is about a six hour drive, mostly through a barren and wind-swept plain featuring towns like Lone Pine and Bishop. One hour north of Los Angeles is a town called Mojave, populated primarily with gas stations and truck stops. There is no reason why you’d know this bend-in-the road town except for a sign that reads “Welcome to Mojave.” But the back of the sign has another message, a somewhat surprising one: “If my people will humble themselves and pray, I will heal their land.”

Now, I know nothing about the history of this sign, but I do know a little something about the quotation. It is taken from the Old Testament, and it is perhaps one of the most quoted verses in the entire Bible. Solomon has just been crowned king, and God warns him about judgment that will come if the nation disobeys. The actual verse reads, “If My people who are called by My name” and stipulates that they “turn from their wicked ways.” Judgment, in this case, amounted to drought and famine that would come over their land. Interestingly, people like to borrow this promise for themselves when they hope for healing in their lives, even though it was meant for Israel, not Mojave. But it raises an interesting question.

Does God judge nations today? Are there things that a country might do which would bring God’s judgment on their community? Do we share the consequences of one another’s choices as a people? Undeniably, this is true on a smaller scale. The mismanagement of a company impacts the financial stability of its employees. The carelessness of one camper sparks a massive conflagration that reduces homes to ashes. The affair of one spouse destroys the home-life for his or her children. It may seem unjust, but we are linked with one another for better or worse, regardless of culpability. Is the same true of a country? Is a nation judged because of the faithless choices of a few, and if so, can the faithful choices of a few bring healing to a land?

1) The Tipping Point

When you sit down and read through the Old Testament, you find that it is largely the story of how God founded a nation and how He eventually came to judge that nation. It was a long process and didn’t happen all at once, but as a result of a series of choices that the people made. From their demand to have a king to the decline that came under progressively worse leadership, it seems like they inched towards the judgment that would come in the exile in Babylon. And the further you read, the more you sense the patience of God growing thin as the story progresses. It is palpable in the warnings that are issued and in the escalating language, until finally they hit a “tipping point” of judgment. I believe that tipping point comes in the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was a prophet who ministered during the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He witnessed the conquest by Egypt, the struggle with Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the grisly siege of Jerusalem, the exile of the people and perhaps the razing of that city and her temple. He records this message, a fascinating kind of ultimatum from God: “The instant I speak concerning a nation…to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it,if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it.” He continues with the same tipping point only in reverse.

What I find so interesting in this statement is how very broad it is, and how it represents a general truth about how God deals with “a nation.” Certainly, the nation of Israel was a chosen people who had a covenant with God. But the Bible is filled with other nations who also experienced judgment. Most children could tell you the story of Jonah, but no one ever thinks to ask why the Assyrian city of Nineveh was being judged at all. Of what wickedness were they guilty? What is the tipping point of judgment?

2) The Leadership Factor

There is an incredibly interesting piece of the story of the fall of Jerusalem that is probably not well known. When Nebuchadnezzar sent thousands of people into exile in Babylon in 597 BC, he placed Zedekiah on the throne of Jerusalem as his puppet king. Just eight years later, Zedekiah led a rebellion against Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar responded mercilessly. He laid siege to Jerusalem for several years. It was a gruesome experience, and when the city fell, Zedekiah was blinded and taken away. But before that happened, he came to Jeremiah for counsel, and here is what God said to him.

“‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be as a prize to him. For I have set My face against this city for adversity and not for good,” says the Lord.”

Unfortunately, Zedekiah would not listen and did not surrender. What this means is that as far as judgment is concerned, leadership matters. I am sure that Zedekiah curried favor among the people. He most likely gathered their support by appealing to their nationalism and distaste for foreigners. Why, it wouldn’t be hard to convince them that they should rebel. After all, was not God on their side? Weren’t they His chosen people? He probably reminded them of the good old days when David reigned and they enjoyed prosperity. But when the Babylonians came knocking, his leadership was a disaster.

If you support a leader who is reckless and who worships power and not humility, who won’t listen to wise counsel and who does not seek the Lord, then you are going to be in for trouble. Very often, a nation is judged when its leader refuses to be accountable to God or anyone else. It was the pattern that was played out over and over again in Judah and Israel. If you treasured the strength that he promised and believed his lies, you should reconsider. However, what if you didn’t support that leader, and yet—like Jeremiah—are suffering the consequences with others as if you had? What then?

3) The Truth about Healing

The most refreshing and yet heart-rending piece of the book of Jeremiah comes near the middle, where he pours out the following cry of his heart to his God: “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved.” Jeremiah makes the same appeal for healing in his own life that you or I would make. You see, while we are able to analyze this book at a safe distance, it is easy to forget that he dwelt in the middle of the chaos and hell that he described. He knew a culture that pursued anything that promised to satisfy. He sparred with terrible leadership who sought his counsel but then refused to listen. He suffered imprisonment and felt the pangs of starvation as he lived through that siege. And he ended up fleeing to Egypt with the survivors and probably lived out his days in exile from his own country.

In the midst of that terrible siege, however, he could offer a glimmer of hope to his desperate neighbors in the words that he wrote: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” Jeremiah was coming to know something about how to think about healing while in captivity.

Honestly, I think that what we value most in America is freedom, as if it is godliness. Liberty is like our national religion, it is so close to the American spirit. When we pray for healing, we think in terms of freedom. But I don’t know that God values freedom in the way that we do. In fact, I think that the greatest works for the kingdom of God have actually been completed, not in freedom, but in captivity. Freedom is more likely an idol of our nation that we have conflated with our faith, and that has led us to treasure things that are not the things of God. I don’t really know if God values freedom, but without a doubt, I know that God welcomes faithfulness. When we find ourselves praying for healing, maybe we should pray for faithfulness.

Maybe you are living in a Jeremiah situation, sharing the consequences of someone else’s decisions, with no voice whatsoever. Maybe it is related to the leadership of this nation and the way that America seems to have lost its way, and it makes you want to shout and scream on social media to be heard. Maybe it is due to the decision of your spouse to be unfaithful to you, and so you are living with the prison of a life that you never would have chosen. Or maybe it is the result of decisions that your children have made on their own, but you are having to live with their choices as if they were your own. You feel like you are in captivity and need to be freed; you long for healing.

In the midst of your situation, resist the temptation to pray for freedom; instead, pray for faithfulness, and healing may be what you receive.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/06/can-faithfulness-really-heal-a-nation/feed/1920Why Mercy and Justice is the Worship that God Chooseshttp://www.danradmacher.com/2017/05/why-mercy-and-justice-is-the-worship-that-god-chooses/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/05/why-mercy-and-justice-is-the-worship-that-god-chooses/#commentsFri, 26 May 2017 19:04:40 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=916Many years ago, I worked at one of the major record labels in town doing production. We produced artists like the Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson and David Bowie, as well as a plethora of smaller artists. During my time there, we began to do cross-marketing for some Christian artists, and that included some of the worship compilations that had begun to be popular. I remember copy-checking the artwork for “Best Worship Songs of 2000” and thinking, “Who gets to decide what qualifies as a ‘best worship song’”? There was a television marketing campaign for that release too. If you watched any late-night television, you would stumble on ads that featured a massive worship space crammed with people, a worship band that was cranking, and titles of songs scrolling down the screen. Every hand was raised. The camera then would pan the faces in the front, eyes closed with beatific expressions. I don’t know if these commercials were real, but they sure looked like it.

The question that has always puzzled me is this: Who decides whether something is worship? I don’t mean the style of the music per se. I mean the whole thing. Fill that in with whatever expression of worship you might prefer, whether people thumbing their rosaries, monks lighting candles, or an organist blasting the dust out of those colossal pipes. How do we know if a worship activity is actually pleasing to the One who inspires our praise?

There are a few places in the Bible that answer this question, and yet I am intrigued by one chapter that answers it in an unique and surprising way. It is nestled away in Isaiah 58. On the surface, Isaiah is talking about fasting, but in the midst of the discussion he asks an interesting question: What kind of worship would God choose to receive? The answer might be unsettling, but first let me clarify the problem before I handle the prescription.

1) The Problem

As it turns out, the Israelite community was not so different from our modern one. Worship was apparently very popular in that day and age. We know this because the author describes their worship in some detail here. It is like a camera was rolling in the back of the room, making notes of all the ways in which they would pursue God in praise. Let me summarize.

It was a time of devotion. “They seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching God.” Notice the emphasis on the word “delight” here. They didn’t do these things grudging at all; they were eager for this experience.

It was a time of fasting. Fasting was typically done in times of national calamity, but after the Exile it had become institutionalized as part of the liturgical calendar. It was like a religious holiday in which everyone had gathered, but which might have had little to do with worship.

It was a time of “afflicting their souls.” I love the archaic language of the Old Testament here. This was related to the Day of Atonement, which was similar to our Holy Week. It was a time to examine oneself, repent of wrong actions and attitudes, and ask for God’s forgiveness. Elaborate rituals had grown up to accompany this time, including sackcloth and ashes.

Unfortunately, God calls their worship “transgression.” This isn’t just misguided worship, but worship that is actually sin. What is the problem here? The author tells them: “In the day of your fast you find pleasure and exploit all your laborers. Indeed you fast for strife and debate, and to strike with the fist of wickedness.” It is difficult to know exactly what is going on here; there might have been some kind of exploitation or conflict happening at the same time as their celebrations. But one thing is clear. Worship had failed to permeate their relationships, because they were atrocious. So he says, “Would you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?”

2) The Prescription

It is both refreshing and a little sobering to me that God has a completely different idea about worship than mine. As Tim Keller says, “If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.” You see, for myself, worship can be very compartmentalized. Worship is about what I am offering to God by way of an activity. But for God, it seems that the activity simply cannot be separated from the lifestyle. A symbiotic relationship exists between how I worship my God and how I treat others in my life, particularly the most vulnerable. What I might not appreciate is that there is a horizontal aspect to worship. So what is the “heart of worship” for God? Mercy and justice. Isaiah continues:

“Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?”

Do you see the essence of what the author is saying? Love for God is revealed by love for one another. You can’t praise God and turn a blind eye to injustice around you. You can’t adore God and ignore one another. That is what Jesus means when He talks about the Great Commandment. You are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, but also your neighbor as yourself. If I am stand in worship, unaware of the plight of those around me, then something is wrong. Compartmentalizing our worship, according to Isaiah, causes it not to be “heard” by God.

3) The Rationale

I recently hosted a discussion about food stamps and social programs, and whether the American government should be proactive in upholding care for the poor and needy by way of assistance. There were a wide variety of ideas and assumptions in this discussion. And while there was certainly plenty of disagreement, the sticking point really came from the religious right. They were resolute that welfare was absolutely unbiblical, even evil, because it enables those people who don’t want to work. That was the deep belief behind the objection—an entrenched idea about who the poor are.

So I changed tactics and asked a simple question: “Who in this discussion has gone hungry?” I wasn’t surprised to find that everyone pontificating in the dialogue couldn’t raise their hand. But one continued to press the point: He argued that assistance of this kind creates dependency. Now this is not a teaching that is found in the Bible, and so he struggled to justify that thesis. But I respect that we can differ on these issues, and so I asked him an even more pointed question: “How do YOU personally support those who are hungry?” He replied, “I don’t personally know anyone who is hungry.”

Friends, we have a problem in this country. We don’t know the poor when they are not us. As Christians, we simply don’t want to see the poor or our neighbor as our responsibility. We see them outside of the worship that we offer to our God. (Please note: I’m not talking here about those people who are manipulating others in order to enable their lifestyle. Clearly, the Bible presents boundaries with regards to how we help those in need.) However, I am drawing attention to the inconvenient truth in this passage: God makes the poor and least deserving part of our worship. If you don’t “personally know anyone who is hungry,” then maybe your worship is flawed.

You see, when you don’t know anyone who is hungry—when you haven’t personally met them or participated in their lives in an ongoing way—then it is easy to make absurd generalizations about their lives and their habits. It is easy to see them as less deserving because they don’t really want to work. It is easy to assume that they are “the other” and not you. But if you reach out and meet them and listen to their stories, then you may see them differently. It becomes harder to paint them all with such a large, stereotypical brush as being lazy. If you enter someone else’s story, then you begin to see how very alike you actually are—undeserving, and needing of grace.

In my opinion, that is the “why” of this equation. Social justice causes us to recognize the incredible grace of God to all of us. That is why it is an act of worship. It causes us to see God as that much bigger when we are reminded of how small we are—as no more deserving than anyone else on the planet. So in worship, we affirm over and over again just how much we need God’s grace. Honesty with regards to our neediness will connect us to everyone around us. But on the flip side, entitlement isolates us, interrupting our fellowship and disconnecting us from God and one another.

I understand that many of you reading this are going to disagree with me regarding how this should be accomplished. Reasonable, godly people will sometimes disagree on issues like this. I completely respect that. But do not for a minute let that discussion eclipse whether or not we should actively be pursuing this kind of offering. Jesus was very stern with the religious people of His time: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Let that sink in.

Instead, fight against the sense of entitlement that declares, “I deserve everything that I have because I have worked hard.” Fight against those impulses that divide us from one another through pride and judgment. Let social justice be an ongoing reminder in your life of God’s amazing grace. When we kneel with others in worship, let it be our abject brokenness and yet extreme blessedness that joins us in humility at the foot of the cross.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/05/why-mercy-and-justice-is-the-worship-that-god-chooses/feed/1916Your Smartphone is Not Your Friend (or Why the Mona Lisa is Not a Selfie Opportunity)http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/05/your-smartphone-is-not-your-friend-or-why-the-mona-lisa-is-not-an-opportunity-for-a-selfie/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/05/your-smartphone-is-not-your-friend-or-why-the-mona-lisa-is-not-an-opportunity-for-a-selfie/#commentsThu, 04 May 2017 17:31:17 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=904My wife and I recently returned from an eight-day trip to Paris for our wedding anniversary. I had never been to Paris before, although I studied French in college and so I am very familiar with the various sites and monuments. I know the L’Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde and Notre-Dame, and can repeat the names of those places with a pretty fair French accent. I even remember all the words to the song about the Champs-Élysées that I learned in high school, and was prepared to croon them as I strolled along that most famous of avenues. Let’s say that I have experienced Paris pretty fully with my mind, but not with my senses.

So as our airport shuttle made its way from Charles de Gaulle to the heart of Saint-Germain, I experienced what no picture in any book could possibly have evoked in me: wonder. From the freeway, we identified the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur erupting out of the skyline from its height in Montmartre. A little further on, La Tour Eiffel burst into view, dwarfing almost every other building around, ten times larger than our imaginations suggested. Coming in sight of the Louvre, we were amazed by a palace so sprawling that it could not be fully viewed without turning one’s head.

It was in those moments that I felt “the impulse.” You know what I mean. It was like there was a huge magnet in my pocket that was enticing my hand to reach in, my arm caught in a tractor beam that was slowing and inexorably luring me to plunge inside and draw out, of course, my smartphone…to snap a picture.

1) The Impulse

As I said before, I have seen many photographs of these places, and any picture that I could take would simply not do them justice, particularly from the window of an airport shuttle speeding along. I could not possibly capture the sense of wonder, and yet, that is exactly what I felt compelled to do. My spirit ached to immortalize in some meagre way what I was feeling at that moment. And strangely, it was a compulsion so very strong as to be almost irresistible.

Unfortunately, that impulse robs me of what I was actually hoping to do, which was genuinely and profoundly to experience something. And instead of living in the moment and fully experiencing that wonder with my senses, I fixate on a little, iridescent screen that has dwarfed the experience to that of a postcard. My whole being with these five senses has been redirected to an artificial sixth sense that I purchased at Best Buy, just a substitute for the real thing. And my purpose in the moment has shifted as well. Instead of reveling in the moment and soaking up all the sights and sounds, I am focused on getting just the right shot, with the proper framing and lighting and so forth. I have chosen to be enslaved to a device.

Now, I understand that there are a variety of motivations behind this impulse. I know that some people want to document their trip in pictures, although a camera of better quality might be a wiser choice. I know that some people are focused on posting to social media—we’ll talk about that in a minute. But I think that the rest of us fall into an intermediate limbo, a sort of twilight zone where we don’t really know how to experience things with our senses anymore. Taking a picture has become a substitute for living fully in the moment as a sensual human being.

2) The Voyeur

Having come to the city of museums, we were destined to visit quite a number of them, and we certainly filled out our dance card in this regard. We spent two days in the Louvre (where we might have spent two weeks), and that was in addition to the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée de l’Orangerie and any number of other monuments like Les Invalides or the Pantheon that are a different kind of museum. But as I wandered through these places, what I experienced of the other visitors was intriguing.

Over and over again, I would see visitors walk up to a painting, take out their phone or Ipad and get the picture all lined up, take a shot and move on. As far as I could tell, that was the extent of their engagement with this breath-taking work of art. They had chosen to limit their experience to that of an art voyeur, a peeping tom who goes about snapping seductive shots, gathering a catalogue for their private perusal, but never really finding satisfaction in the experience.

I don’t mean to be judgmental, because I completely understand the impulse. I have felt the same way. Here is this beautiful or disturbing or evocative piece of art hanging on the wall. How exactly am I supposed to experience this thing? In the most concrete terms, what should I do? Where do I direct my eyes? Where do I direct my mind? How do I know when I’m finished? They don’t hand out those kinds of instructions in the gift shop. We’re like perpetual virgins on our wedding night in front of a work of art. We aren’t sure how to experience something like this, and so it happens that we allow our smartphones to usurp our senses.

Here is the problem with that approach. When you don’t really look at someone or something—when you don’t really experience something with your senses—then I must tell you that you miss out on the details that give it meaning. You don’t truly understand what the painter or author or Creator was trying to say in that work of art, and so your understanding is reduced to that of merely a snapshot. We gloss over truth when we don’t pause to experience beauty in the detail of something, and I believe that is true when we experience people as well. When you don’t really look at someone, then you never truly meet them at all.

3) The Narcissist

I saw something else in the museums that was far more troubling than the art voyeur: the art narcissist. All throughout the museum, I would see people taking selfies of themselves with famous works of art, inserting themselves into the work, making the experience all about them. At the Musée d’Orsay, I saw the deep and troubled eyes of a self-portrait of Van Gogh pleading, crying out with each cheese of a smiling tourist, “Please make them stop.” It was a feeding frenzy. Gathered around the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, a perpetual crowd of people never disperses because each one has to shoot a selfie with the enigmatic ingenue. My wife tells me that there are blogs dedicated to how to take a good selfie. Apparently one is supposed to practice taking selfies in order to do it just right. Who knew?

Lest I sound judgmental once again, I have taken selfies. I remember that my friends and I in college used to take selfies with an old manual camera on rides at Disneyland, mouth open and hair blown back. And in Paris, my wife and I would shoot selfies along the Seine or at Versailles. Honestly, I’m not saying that taking a selfie is somehow wrong in and of itself. However, if we believe that the idea of a museum is to document our lives, then there is something seriously wrong. We are not looking to be changed by art, but rather to add the weight of this famous work to our own portfolio. Are we so insubstantial that we must steal glory?

Perhaps the best advice that I could give is to ask yourself when you feel that impulse, “Why am I reaching for this camera? Is it because I am so moved that I must record this moment? Is it because I want to remember this particular item so that I can come back to it? Or is it because I want to add glory to my profile?” It makes sense to ask questions like this before you reach for that addictive phone. Because if the camera has become a substitute for experience in your life, then please believe me: you’ll be much more satisfied if you just put it away.

4) My Approach

I had a music history teacher in college who changed my life and changed the way that I experience the world. In music lab, we used to have to listen to these famous works of music and write down what we experienced. At first, it was just absolute torture, and the reason was because I did not know how to listen. Music was just a wall of sound that I could not pick apart with my mind. However, my teacher gave us a list of questions that asked simple things like—what instruments did you hear? Did the melody go high or low? Were there a lot of instruments playing or only a few? I began to listen three-dimensionally. The same can happen with all of our senses. The key is to begin asking questions—that opens up the experience.

When I go to a museum, I don’t wander by every work of art, as if I have to see everything. Usually, I study ahead of time. If I don’t, then I’ll go into a room and walk up to whatever piece catches my eye. Then, I will make three observations to myself and ask two questions. The observations may be as simple as, “Look how he outlined everything” or as complex as, “Look where the eyes of that character are directed by the artist.” I then try to ask some questions of the piece. “What does the artist want me to feel? What is supposed to surprise me?” Maybe a fundamental question precedes all of these: why am I really here?

And as a general rule, I never take out my camera phone in a museum. Never. Why? Because I know why I’m there. Just say no to that impulse and I believe you’ll find that your experience in life AND in the museum is altogether new.

]]>http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/05/your-smartphone-is-not-your-friend-or-why-the-mona-lisa-is-not-an-opportunity-for-a-selfie/feed/1904Why Christians Need to Become Better Critical Thinkershttp://www.danradmacher.com/2017/04/why-christians-need-to-become-better-critical-thinkers/
http://www.danradmacher.com/2017/04/why-christians-need-to-become-better-critical-thinkers/#respondThu, 13 Apr 2017 17:59:20 +0000http://www.danradmacher.com/?p=899When my son was in kindergarten, his teacher had a tradition that surrounded the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. In advance of March 17th every year, they would begin to talk about Irish culture and leprechauns, and would build little leprechaun traps to catch the tiny miscreants in their exploits. It was a harmless prank that she would perpetrate on the kids, much the same as parents might encourage their kids to leave out cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. However, it prompted this ongoing discussion with my son about faith and the nature of belief. My son was convinced that leprechauns were real, and so we would talk about it. Why do you believe what you believe? Now, the easiest thing would be to say, “Have you ever seen a leprechaun?” and let it go at that. But that is an intellectually lazy way to address the issue, and in the end, it undermines the formation of real beliefs.

As it turns out, we do believe in some things that we can’t see, but we have good reasons to believe those things. I want him to understand that difference. Well, I almost had him convinced until we arrived at school that day. His classroom had been turned upside down, and there were little green footprints all over the place. He turned to me and said, “You see, Dad? I told you they were real.” The good news is that he was observing; the bad news is that he was completely misled.

As I look around the world today, I find many Evangelicals who haven’t been encouraged to ask questions about their faith, to wrestle for themselves with the big issues that go along with faith development. They’ve been conditioned to rely too heavily on authority figures to tell them what to think, instead of being trained how to think. In my experience, many seem to have an under-developed ability to think critically about other issues too, and so are easily misled. As I peruse social media, I find many bogus quotations and clearly fake news that has been reposted by Christians because they lack the ability to ask critical questions of things they read. The problem is that the resurrection is not fake news, but it is might as well be if we can’t begin to think critically about why we believe what we believe. It could be that the future of Christianity itself hangs in the balance.

The exhortation to be critical thinkers comes from the apostle Peter. He challenges them with the following: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” There are three really important aspects here.

1) Durable faith is built upon asking good questions.

In this passage, Peter is instructing the early church how to behave in light of persecution from the outside world, and the suffering that would inevitably occur. But in the middle of these instructions, he adds a surprising detail: be ready to give a defense of your faith. Be ready to address questions that will come from any and all who ask. Underneath his challenge is a basic truth: asking critical questions is a natural and necessary part of faith development.

Growing up as an Evangelical, I didn’t find that questions were welcomed in the community. Questions were frightening. Questions seemed open-ended and could be undermining to your faith. I mean, where would those questions lead you? The people who asked questions seemed to be on a slippery slope to denying their faith. On the other hand, I remember a professor in my AP Humanities class who would continually say, “Raise those critical questions!” At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about. He said it so often that it became part of an impression of him that we did behind his back. But he also made me wonder, why was it so important to ask questions? And why was he unafraid to do so?

Some would say that there is no real learning without being able to ask critical questions. I would say that there isn’t durable faith without them. Ultimately, I don’t think that God is frightened of questions. He gave me the gift of reason so that I could think about truth, and part of thinking about truth involves observation and curiosity. If I want a faith that will be durable—that will carry me through the storms—then it must be strong enough to weather the questions that will come, not ignore them or try not to think about them. We must have confidence that questions make our faith stronger in the long run, not weaker.

2) Durable faith has really good reasons that support it.

The word that Peter uses to “give a defense” is the Greek word “apologian” from which we get our word “apologetics.” He has in view a formal court proceeding in which the defendant is being asked to give reasons for his behavior or beliefs. This is an opportunity to critically explain what undergirds your faith by way of reason to someone who stands as an impartial judge in your case. How would someone who doesn’t already believe hear your evidence?

As my son and I discussed leprechauns, I would ask him these kinds of critical questions: “How do we know that Jesus was a real guy and that he wasn’t just like a leprechaun?” That question took him back a little. I think that he’d been waiting for me to tell him what to think, instead of asking him to think for himself. And so we talked about it together and came to the conclusion that real people knew Jesus. They talked with him, touched him, ate with him and then they documented some of their experiences, including five hundred who saw Him after His resurrection. That was just the beginning of the questions that we’ll discover, questions like, “Why would Jesus’ disciples give their lives for something they knew to be a hoax?” As it turns out, there are some good reasons for our hope, but they are best surfaced by asking good, open-ended critical questions, questions that have the potential of making us uncomfortable, but that also form the strong concrete of faith.

Now, I understand that the growth of faith is not purely cerebral. When the Spirit of God knocks upon the door of your heart, there is indeed something mystical and experiential that is happening in that interaction. It might not condense well to the words that would flow in a courtroom. And if you are someone who believed as a child, then your capacity for abstract thought was small as well. But as your faith grows, it needs to be strengthened with reason, or it will crumble over time. We would do well not to ignore those reasons if we want a durable faith.

3) Durable faith behaves in a non-defensive manner.

It is not lost on me how this verse ends. What is the posture of the person who desires to give a defense of his or her faith? What is the posture of the Christian who is a critical thinker? Peter mentions it here: “In meekness and in fear.”

When you listen to someone make a defense of their beliefs, you can almost immediately hear the ones who are motivated by fear. They get defensive. They get self-protective. They easily get nasty and refuse to yield on any point. Proving themselves is almost more important than seeking knowledge and truth. Questions are frightening to them because they feel threatened by them. They are unused to seriously entertaining them. Honestly, these are the kinds of interactions that I see on social media all the time. But the fear that Peter mentions is not the fear of being humiliated, but the fear of God.

We tend to equate the word “meekness” with “humility,” as if they are the same, but they are not. Humility means not thinking too highly of yourself, and so being humiliated is being made to look low. But meekness is different than humility. It suggests power and status that are set aside and that aren’t necessarily exercised. The godly critical thinker is not afraid of seeming to lose an argument because they’re not motivated by proving themselves. Their goal is not to defeat their opponent but to win them. They are more concerned with the glory of God.

If you make a reasoned defense of something, then you are almost certain to be accused of one thing: arrogance. That is the danger—that you will bring discredit to the glory of God in the way that you reason with others. Interestingly, Jesus was never accused of arrogance, at least, not in the way that He argued. In the way that Jesus went about his discussions, He used critical questions to draw people out, but never said more than He needed to, and never did it to protect His reputation or His own glory. It was immaterial to Jesus whether He was perceived by others to have won the argument. His goal wasn’t to win glory for himself here—it was to win people.

If there is one thing that I could change on the face of Christianity, it would be for Christians to start to thinking critically about their faith and the issues in the world. It would be for them to be unafraid of questions and to actually seek out those with opposing viewpoints in redemptive dialogue. It would be for them to interact, not in order to defeat the other individual but to win them. It would be for them to be more interested in the glory of God than in their own glory. That is the kind of Christian who will set the table for new people in the kingdom of heaven.